


staying in

by verysmall



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, M/M, absolutely no redeeming qualities, dialogue-heavy if youre into that kind of thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-28
Updated: 2016-12-28
Packaged: 2018-09-12 18:55:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9085489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verysmall/pseuds/verysmall
Summary: listen, its just them being happy and in love, im so tired, season four is in less than a week





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kizzie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kizzie/gifts).



> id like to thank ari and oliver for being there for me, giving me feedback and stroking my ego
> 
> id like to thank alexei for being my secret santa recipient and a kid who deserves good things
> 
> and id like to thank bo and phoenix for organizing the secret santa in the first place, without which i would have done absolutely nothing productive this vacation

“I wan’chu to take it easy tomorrow,” he mumbles into Sherlock’s hair.

  
“M’kay.”

  
“None of the…” He waves around the hand that’s not burrowed up Sherlock’s tee shirt. “No going out looking for knife fights.”

  
Sherlock has grown too sluggish to move but scrunches his nose in offense. “It was one knife fight, and I—”

  
“—okay, well, tomorrow it’s zero knife fights—”

  
“—and I needed to look at it.”

  
“I know.”

  
“But I don’t anymore.”

  
John says, “Mm-hm,” sounding altogether too satisfied with himself. They rest in cozy silence.

 

* * *

 

Morning.

  
He scrubs the crescents of toothpaste off the corners of his mouth and shimmies back into bed. Sherlock is curled up like a bat that’s running a fever, knees up next to his chest, arms plastered all around himself to compensate for the cuddle that John broke when he got up. John doesn’t quite return to him, just so that there’s some room for uncurling, but he sticks his nose in the fluff of Sherlock’s hair and tugs the duvet over their shoulders. “I’m all yours today, you know,” he says.

  
“You’re always mine,” mumbles Sherlock.

  
“Yeah, but today I’m extra-yours. I’ve got no plans. Zero plans.”

  
Sherlock peels his face from the inside corner of his elbow. “Didn’t you—aren’t there those...grown-up things you were going to do?”

  
John considers. “Well, I did think maybe...sometime today I might clean up the fridge a bit,” he tries, turning to look at him. “Or the sitting room.”

  
They stare into each other’s eyes and burst into snickers. “Get me breakfast,” says Sherlock.

  
“Get me breakfast _please_ ,” corrects John.

  
“I asked you first.”

  
John reaches over and tucks a curl behind Sherlock’s ear. “D’you mean from Speedy’s? Or am I cooking now? Because,” he says, gazing at Sherlock, “if you want anything besides coffee and grapes—”

  
“I want their vegetarian one, with lots of extra toast.”

  
“Ah, okay. And beans in a separate thing?”

  
“No, just…” Sherlock unfolds himself and slithers an arm around John. “Have them use the toast to make a corner blockade.”

  
John’s giggles sound like they’re falling down a flight of stairs. Fully committed to happening. He says, “right, I’ll ask about that.”

  
“It’s just the reasonable thing to do,” says Sherlock from the cushion of John’s chest. John wanders some fingers through that lovely dark hair, and Sherlock’s lovely soft nose wiggles against John’s sternum, and he stretches his lovely long arm even further and tighter around John’s waist. “Mm,” he says. “Why aren’t you going.”

 

* * *

 

Sherlock is sitting cross-legged at the kitchen table by the time John gets back. “They wouldn’t do the blockade,” reports John, striding over to the counter, where he finds a mug of coffee. “Oh, ta.”

  
There’s a deep warmth and satisfaction that comes of witnessing Sherlock’s heartfelt assault on a large breakfast. He doesn’t speak until he’s slowed down a bit, and then he says, “what.”

  
“What,” echoes John with his mouth full. “Just lookin’ at you.”

  
“And you’re thinking while doing it. Otherwise you’d have brought over the newspaper.”

  
John glances at the paper on the coffee table, at nothing in particular, and back at Sherlock. “There’s this board game I’m trying to remember the name of,” he says, and watches Sherlock’s interest pull taut like a fishing line. “I was wondering—”

  
“Oh, good,” says Sherlock, “I love these.”

  
“I know,” says John. “That’s why I’m asking you.”

  
Sherlock raises a forkful of grilled tomato halfway to his mouth, then begins to lower it again with the kind of approving squint you give to a cat that’s about to knock over an expensive vase belonging to somebody you hate. “I’m not sure I like the way you said ‘asking’ there, John Watson.”

  
“But that’s what I’m doing. I’m just _asking_.”

  
“Mm, I think you’re implying something—”

  
“It’s just a simple, I’m just, I’m only—”

  
“I think there’s something you’d like to say.”

  
“—that’s all I’m doing, I’m just _asking_  the _arse king_.”

  
The tabletop is too broad for their faces to meet over it. The kiss they share is implicit.

 

* * *

 

In the middle of a sentence, Sherlock wipes his mouth on the inside of his shirt and heads back to bed. John follows him, saying, “oh, so that’s how it’s going to be,” and stripping his trousers and cardigan off. They kiss for real now, with bits of egg in their teeth and all, and roll themselves up in the bedclothes until they can barely move, until they’re anchored to each other and only have room left to giggle. Sherlock’s nose presses cold against John’s skin, and John squeaks every time it shifts. Their voices this close to each other get to dwindle down, contented hums letting themselves be felt rather than heard, climbing straight from one chest into to the other. They nearly doze off like that.

  
“Ludo,” says John.

  
“Womph,” says Sherlock.

  
“That’s what it’s called. That’s the game. You’ve really never played?”

  
“I just play what’s around.” Sherlock fidgets inside their cocoon. “Sounds boring anyway. Mindless.”

  
“There’s something about mindless games, though.”

  
“The mindlessness.”

  
“No, I mean…” John grapples with it for a moment. “It’s just, it’s nice to just move the pieces however far you’re supposed to. No pressure to strategize or anything.”

  
“That’s not a game,” says Sherlock, “that’s a counting exercise.”

  
Every time he blinks, his eyelashes drag along the skin of John’s neck. It must tickle. “I know what you mean, though,” he amends. “Sort of like when you play Scrabble but don’t keep score.”

  
“Yeah, exactly.”

 

* * *

 

Sherlock’s in a dressing gown when John wakes up. He’s slouched against the headboard, with his bum next to John’s nose and his eyes fixed on his wiggling feet. “And how are you?” asks John from the bottom of a well of deep contentment.

  
“I’ve got socks on!” announces Sherlock.

  
John looks at them and then drops his head back down and shuts his eyes. Fluffy, with a cloud pattern. “Ah, so you have.”

  
“There’s aloe infused.”

  
“Is there,” says John. “They look very comfy. Where did you get them?”

  
“Nowhere,” says Sherlock.

  
“Sherlock,” says John.

  
“They are quite comfy,” says Sherlock.

  
“I think you got them from my sock drawer. I think those are my socks.”

  
“My socks now.”

  
“Mm.” John hoists one of his legs over both of Sherlock’s. “Mmmm _my_ socks.”

 

* * *

 

John sits down in his chair, unfolds the Scrabble board, and sets it on the rotating platter.

  
“Lazy Susan,” corrects Sherlock.

  
John looks up. Takes a moment. “Who?”

  
“That’s what it’s called,” says Sherlock as he waves a finger at the platter. The Susan.

  
“Oh, neat.”

  
Sherlock leans forward and sets to flipping over all the upward-facing tiles in the box, singing _God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen_ loudly in his head so that he doesn’t remember which letters are hiding where.

  
John, lovestruck, watches that head bounce back and forth to the rhythm.

 

* * *

 

The decision to not keep score is a wise one: John is a cheat, in the spirit, if not the letter, of Scrabble law.

  
Sherlock regards with bemusement the X that John has placed next to the I of Sherlock’s own painstakingly crafted SPIGOT. “That’s not—no,” he manages.

  
“Yeah it is,” says a cheerful John.

  
“No,” Sherlock presses on, “Scrabble is in English. That’s Greek.”

  
John shrugs. “So let it be Greek.”

  
“No, Scrabble rules, English words only.”

  
“Oh, so now you like rules. Alright,” says John, peering at the instructions and jabbing down a finger. “What about this bit that says you have to issue a penalty kiss for each time you get smart with your opponent?”

  
Sherlock shrinks down in his chair with the beginnings of a grin. “That’s not what it says.”

  
“Yep. It says here…” John leans over for a better look. “Says here, ‘Challenger must place one large kiss on the lips of his opponent,’ _and_ ,” he states, holding up his finger for emphasis, “ _and_ call him handsome.”

  
“You’re lying. You’re lying through your teeth,” says Sherlock. He bats his socked feet against John’s shins, so John clamps his legs together and traps one. “Give that back.”

  
“My foot now.”

  
“Ah, I see. Not satisfied with fraud and sabotage, you’ve moved on to theft.”

  
“Opponent is allowed to keep foot until he gets a kiss.”

  
“Opponent is about to have squashed toes,” threatens Sherlock, hammering his free heel on the tops of John’s feet. It jostles the coffee table, and all the tiles on the board dance about an inch to the left.

  
John is laughing. “You stop that or I’ll take off your sock,” he says, and Sherlock freezes.

  
“No.”

  
“Yes.”

  
The air is rife with tension. John pinches the toe of the sock.

  
Sherlock’s captive leg begins to spasm, sending one side of the coffee table into the air and effectively ending the Scrabble game. With an “A-ha!” of victory, John whips off the sock entirely and wiggles four cruel fingertips across the sole of Sherlock’s foot. Sherlock squawks, twists, and his bum slides off his chair. John goes for the other foot.

  
It elicits a noise from Sherlock that’s half objection and half hysterical laughter. He squirms out from under the coffee table, but as he stands up, he is inundated with swift, precise kisses and a double-handed tickle to his stomach. It’s enough to bully him giggling across the room and onto the couch. As soon as he’s down, John sits on him.

  
“Give,” demands John as he reclaims his other sock.

  
Sherlock, still in the process of catching his breath, beams a smile at the ceiling as John slides his socks over the feet of their rightful owner. “Do you think the people in charge of regulating the rules and professional tournaments call themselves the Scrabble Board? I’m not sure I want to look it up. I’ll be disappointed either way.”

  
“You fucker,” John says. “They’re all stretched from your stupid, big feet.”

  
“They prefer my feet. I thought they fitted quite nicely on me.”

  
“You get your own pair.”

  
“Nothing to do with how roughly you’ve just been treating them, surely.”

  
John sniffs. “I was not ‘treating them roughly,’ I was putting an injustice to rights.”

  
“They may unstretch themselves if you apologize to them.”

  
“I’m not—I thought you liked my _impeccable moral fibre_.”

  
“I like it immensely. Your socks, however.”

  
“My socks liked it too, until you waltzed into their lives with your long feet.”

  
Sherlock holds one of his long feet aloft and watches it sway about in the air. “Can we buy me some socks?” he asks. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> there's a mention very early in the fic of a duvet on their bed. id like to let everyone know that i am aware that sherlocks bed in the show has sheets. but frankly john comes across to me as a duvet person, and i thought it was time something in his life went his way for once


End file.
